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Most camera problems fall into a handful of shapes. This page covers what you can check yourself, and what to hand to support.
Most fixes don’t need a site visit. Support can reconnect a single camera, restart the agent, and read your recorder’s status remotely. Before anyone drives out, contact support. It’s usually faster.

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One camera is dark, the rest are fine

Usually the camera’s connection to your recorder dropped and didn’t come back.
1

Check the camera on your recorder

Bring the camera up on your recorder directly. If it’s dark there too, the problem is between the camera and the recorder: a cable, power, or the camera itself. ARGUS can only see what your recorder can see.
2

If the recorder shows it fine, ask us to reconnect it

Support can reconnect that one camera remotely, without touching the others. It takes a few seconds and the rest of the store keeps streaming.

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Several cameras went dark at once

This usually points at the recorder rather than the cameras. Recorders allow a limited number of simultaneous connections. If something asked for too many at once (often after a power cut or a burst of restarts), the recorder can start refusing new ones until it clears them out on its own. What helps: give it time. Recorders release stale connections by themselves, though some take a while. Support can watch this from our side and tell you whether it’s recovering.
We won’t ask you to reboot your recorder, and you shouldn’t need to. Your recorder is where your footage lives, and a reboot interrupts recording for everyone. We treat that as a last resort that’s yours to authorise, never a routine fix.

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A camera has never worked since setup

If a camera has never shown a picture in ARGUS, it’s almost always one of:
  • The wrong channel number. The camera exists on the recorder, but the address ARGUS was given points at a different channel.
  • A username or password change. If the recorder’s password changed after setup, ARGUS is still using the old one.
  • A camera that’s genuinely offline on the recorder itself.
Support can tell which of these it is from our side. The error we get back is specific. This one usually does need someone at the recorder to correct a setting, but we can tell you exactly what to change before you go.

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The picture is choppy or behind

A few seconds of delay is normal and by design. ARGUS trades a little delay for a smooth, stable picture rather than a fast one that stutters. If it’s worse than that, the usual causes are network congestion in the store or a computer that’s too busy. Contact support and we can see the frame rate we’re actually receiving.

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After a power cut

Cameras and recorders come back at different speeds, and some recorders need several minutes before they’ll accept connections again. If things haven’t settled within about fifteen minutes, get in touch. Support can restart the ARGUS agent remotely, which is safe and doesn’t affect your recording.

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What to tell support

You don’t need to diagnose anything. The fastest message is:
  • Which camera: the name you gave it
  • When it last worked, roughly
  • What your recorder shows for that camera right now
That’s enough for us to start looking without a visit.